Dakota Skies Read online

  ‘I don’t know this area any better than you do,’ the one-armed man told me. He had removed his hat and now stood holding it in front of him like a man at a funeral service. ‘Somewhere they can hold Della until she agrees to hand over the money, I suppose.’

  ‘She doesn’t know where it is!’ I said. I regretted my decision not to tell Della now. If they tried to coerce her, torture Della or even Regina to force her to talk, she couldn’t even save herself by revealing the location of the gold.

  I looked skyward. The moon was nearly full and bright as a silver coin. I thought we had a chance of tracking the bandits and the stolen wagon by its light although it would be slow going.

  ‘Let’s see if we can pick up their trail,’ I said, swinging into the saddle.

  Brian Adair hesitated. Looking up at me, he said, ‘I’ll only slow you down. Go on ahead. I’ll follow on foot.’

  ‘Dodger’s capable of carrying double. Climb up behind.’

  Still the man hesitated and slowly things that had been puzzling me began to come clear in my mind. Why Adair had been in town. Why and how the groups of men were connected. What everyone’s motives were.

  I did not like the conclusions I had come to, but at least – finally – I believed I understood. My voice was gruff as I told him, ‘Climb up behind me. We’re going after your sisters.’ I stretched out my hand and freed one stirrup to assist him and he silently swung up behind me.

  The moon silvered the rime, Dodger’s shadow stretched out ahead of us. The night was growing very cold, but it was a windless, silent chill. Any fresh snowfall would have defeated our quest before we had begun. I cut the wagon’s tracks not a hundred yards from the oak grove. They were plain, arrow-straight. Had I been alone I knew that I could have caught up with a lumbering wagon and heavy dray team in nearly no time. Even carrying double, Dodger was much quicker than our quarry and I knew the black horse to be tireless.

  I still had not eaten. I was almost ashamed to find myself thinking of food, but my body was remonstrating with me fiercely. I let my stomach groan, complain and seemingly shrink and guided the big horse on through the night.

  I had to ask, ‘It was Henry Coughlin who fired his pistol at the bandits, wasn’t it? That’s why he was shot.’

  Brian didn’t answer and I knew that I was right. Two rifles. One handgun, Regina had told me. The handgun was Henry’s because he had given his rifle to Regina. Brian Adair had never fired a shot.

  The one-armed man was simply … a coward. Even with the lives of his sisters involved, he had panicked, perhaps even hidden. That was the reason he had come into Waycross – to avoid his hunters. Barry and Lazarus.

  Hating myself, I confronted him. I could not see his face, of course, as he clung to me with his one good arm and Dodger plunged on through the night, but I could nearly feel the pain it must have reflected as I demanded to – finally – know all of the truth.

  ‘Lazarus and Barry were telling the truth, weren’t they?’ I asked.

  There was no answer.

  ‘You knew that these men from your past were out to kill you. You also knew that Della was coming into a good deal of money. You ran across Tom DeFord again and told him of your situation. You begged him to defend you, and in return promised him a share of Della’s gold – perhaps all of it – if he would only protect you from Barry and Lazarus. The men who knew you were a coward and a snitch in Andersonville Prison.’

  Still the one-armed man did not answer. ‘Did Tom DeFord laugh at you, Brian? Did he remind you again that you were a coward and that only by virtue of his protection and that of the other prison guards did you manage to survive the war?’

  ‘I hate DeFord,’ was his only answer, and I knew by that simple statement that I had guessed correctly. I could see their meeting in my mind; I could see the fierce and merciless Tom DeFord mocking the weakness in Brian. Adair would have pleaded, perhaps sobbed and DeFord would have laughed again, promising in the end to protect Brian for a cut of Della’s hard-earned fortune.

  It was after we had traveled perhaps another mile that Brian Adair spoke to me again. My concentration had been on the wagon tracks, on the hoofprints of the outriders’ horses, watching to assure myself that none had swung out to circle onto the backtrail. It was a surprise, therefore, when his low, whispering voice said, ‘Barry and Lazarus … they had put out the word that they were going to shoot my other arm off.’

  I understood the depths of his terror then. To be a man with one arm was debilitating, but there were many war veterans in the same condition. To be a man without arms – unable to feed yourself, perform the smallest personal functions. …

  My pity ebbed and then turned to anger. My voice was too harsh as I demanded, ‘What of your sisters! Don’t you know what kind of man Tom DeFord is? What he’s capable of!’ For I had never forgotten that young Blackfoot woman. A day did not go by that I did not think of her and the sneering confidence on Tom DeFord’s face on that long-ago day.

  And now we were talking about Della and Regina!

  ‘Is it DeFord that has them?’ I asked urgently.

  ‘Yes,’ was Brian’s feeble response.

  ‘You simply ran away?’ I asked. I was incredulous: no one could be so heartless, so cowardly.

  His explanation was frantic. ‘They couldn’t find the gold. I saw DeFord slap Della to the ground. They were tearing everything apart. I knew that if he didn’t discover the money he would leave me to Lazarus and Barry. Maybe kill me himself! For God’s sake, Miles! You must understand. I slipped away and ran into Waycross, thinking I could get your horse – Regina had told us where she left it. I could have gotten away. I came upon you in the alleyway. I fired into the air out of panic, thinking that they had found me again!’

  I didn’t speak. I was incapable of speech. I thought I heard sobbing, but I did not care. I had thought I had an ally to carry on with, now I knew that Brian Adair was only an obstacle in my search for his sisters. I could have elbowed him off the horse’s back and traveled on more quickly, with fewer encumbrances, but I did not. I guided the indefatigable Dodger on through the silver-black night, desperate to find the two women before a worse fate could befall them.

  It was midnight, I think, when I heard the muffled voice against the back of my buffalo coat say, ‘Do the charitable thing, Miles. Have the mercy to … just kill me now.’

  The moon began to lower its head and the vast land to darken. I could tell by the way he moved that Dodger was tiring so I instructed Brian Adair to swing down and I followed him to the cold earth. We spoke.

  ‘Adair, you’ve got to tell me the truth, all of it, if we’re going to save your sisters.’

  He nodded mutely. I gripped his shoulder and shook it roughly.

  ‘How many men was DeFord riding with? How did he ever catch up with you?’

  Numbly Adair told me, ‘There were four of them – you can see why I didn’t try to fight them off.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I said angrily. ‘Was it easier to just run away like you did at the battle of Bull Run?’

  ‘Who told you that lie?’ he demanded, showing the first hot emotions of the long night.

  ‘Who do you think? Barry and Lazarus.’

  ‘They weren’t there! It’s calumny, I tell you. Something that spread around the prison camp.’

  ‘We’ll let that pass, then,’ I said. After all I wasn’t there either. I had only said that to raise a spark of manhood in this defeated man. There must have been a time when he had been a warrior – no one survives years of brutal war and remains a complete coward. Maybe it was the cumulative shock of the war, the weariness of rising each morning to pitched battle. I would not ever know; I only knew that I needed his help now. Two against four is a much better number than a single man attempting it alone.

  It was cold, bitter cold, yet there was perspiration on Brian’s forehead and his eyes shunted about nervously. ‘Is it Barry and Lazarus you’re looking for?’ I asked, and his head gave
the faintest of nods. ‘They’ll never find us on this dark night.’ Then I unholstered the Colt revolver he had lent me and said, ‘You’ll need this, Brian.’

  ‘How did DeFord know how to find you?’ I asked him.

  ‘We had talked over a plan. He knew Waycross well. He was among the rough crowd there,’ he said with only a shadow of shame. ‘We discussed, I mean, that Barry and Lazarus had somehow gotten onto my trail and that he would side with me against those devils if I would see that he got Della’s little fortune from selling her saloon. It was all going to look like a robbery. Della would never know, nor Regina. Then,’ he shrugged, ‘I was going to get half of her money and so I would be able to take care of both of them.’

  ‘You can’t have been so sure of DeFord!’ I said in astonishment. ‘You forget – I know the man as well as you do.’

  ‘I know. …’ he said miserably. ‘But Barry and Lazarus – you must see! They have vowed to kill me after taking off my other arm. I had no choice but to deal with DeFord.’

  ‘And give your sisters into his possession?’ I said with disgust. Brian grabbed my arm. His grip was surprisingly strong.

  ‘I’d do nothing to harm Regina and Della. It’s just that DeFord got angry when Della wouldn’t tell him where the gold was. He … began to threaten me with the same sort of threat Barry and Lazarus had made.’

  ‘And so you took to your heels, leaving the women with him.’ I was so angry that my lips barely moved as I spoke. In those times, in that place, you have to understand, there were two sorts of men despised more than killers and robbers: liars and cowards. I am not sure which of these two was the more despised in the Dakota country. A man could trust neither. The one you could not do honest business with, the other you could not count on in a fight. These traits were of paramount importance in a lawless land.

  I stilled my anger – it was not serving my purpose. ‘Do you know where DeFord might be headed?’

  ‘I know,’ Brian Adair said hesitantly, his eyes dew-bright in the starshine. The moon was a fading memory in the east. I heard a prairie wolf baying at the dying apparition. ‘It’s a tiny place called Cripple Creek.’ He murmured the last words as if they had terrible significance to him.

  ‘We’re on the right trail, then?’

  ‘As near as I can guess. I haven’t traveled the plains like you have.’

  My experience did me little good. These little communities cropped up, flourished and died away to ghost towns in a matter of a few years, leaving you to wonder why anyone had ever thought to build there. I can name you half a hundred such deserted towns in Dakota Territory alone, old mining camps, settlements that had been promised a railroad spur, so many vanished towns and lost dreams. …

  I judged Dodger to be rested enough to continue. The saddle creaked beneath my weight as I mounted and Brian Adair groaned as I pulled him up behind me, knowing now that there was no way he could escape the debt due to the ghosts of his past.

  I should have had sympathy for him, I suppose, but my thoughts were only on the hardworking Della who had done her best to make a living and prosper in a hard-bitten land. And on Regina—

  The little blue-eyed girl who had shown nothing but hatred for me, despising my very name. I tried to tell myself that I would ride on into danger for any woman needing my help, but there was more to it. I could not lie to my heart. If Regina hated me still, yet I believed that I was very close to being in love with her.

  Not that I knew what love was supposed to feel like. I was a long-riding, lonesome sort of man, never much in the company of women – who were few enough out here on the long plains. Nor did I have anything to offer Regina even if she might consider that I was not an object of scorn – and that seemed doubtful.

  But even a lonesome man has to have his dreams.

  ‘I see something,’ Brian Adair said and I slowed Dodger, halting him easily. Adair was right. The dawn was breaking and there was a streaky orange glow across the horizon in front of us, and silhouetted against that dully glowing backdrop I could make out half a dozen structures. From one of these, smoke curlicued into the crisp morning sky. The last stars were fading. We began to see the morning birds. Doves winged across the sky, cutting quick Vs. Quail and partridges emerged from the sagebrush and crowded sumac to feed, startled when they found us waiting there so that they hid themselves away again. Far away I saw a small herd of antelope watching us, their heads lifted alertly.

  ‘Should we wait?’ Brian Adair asked me uneasily.

  ‘For what?’

  I kneed Dodger and the big black started toward the clump of buildings ahead of us.

  What I meant was – what was there to wait for? Help? From where? Besides, dawning is the time that criminals are least alert. And I would not wait for them to pursue more devilment with Della and Regina being held hostage. DeFord was bound to grow angrier, thinking that Della was lying about knowing where the gold was.

  And he was known for his savage treatment of women.

  I saw as we neared the tiny outpost that only three buildings stood there, long narrow pole-and-sod buildings. What their original purpose had been I could not discern. This was not farmland, ranchland, mining country. Perhaps once a group of weary settlers had found this place and thought, ‘No more. This is far enough to travel these endless plains.’

  There were two leafless sycamores standing on a low knoll behind the huts. These offered little concealment, but there I swung down from Dodger and went flat on my belly to study the layout as best I could. Brian stretched out beside me. I could feel his nervousness, and gave credence to the possibility that wild animals can scent fear. His legs trembled and there was perspiration on his brow in the chill of the morning.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked.

  ‘Take it to them. There’s no sense in letting them rise and shake themselves awake.’

  ‘I don’t see the wagon,’ he whispered in a ragged voice.

  Nor did I. Did that mean that the Conestoga was hidden, that the women in fact were not here, or that they had abandoned it along the trail as being to slow and cumbersome?

  ‘No matter,’ I said. ‘We have to find out and do what we can.’ The man still trembled beside me and I said sharply, ‘Brian, pull yourself together. I know you are familiar with weapons and their use. The war was a long time ago, but you cannot have forgotten that much.’ His eyes widened and then narrowed as I flung words at him that hurt as much as a slap on the face, ‘These are your sisters. Be a man! If you were to lose your other arm it wouldn’t be as bad as having “coward” etched on your tombstone.’

  We started on down toward the encampment through the dawn-daubed morning.

  EIGHT

  Leaving Dodger in the scant shelter of the sycamore trees, we worked our way down the knoll, the frozen grass crackling beneath our boots. I saw no sentries posted, and wondered at that before I realized that DeFord would have no fear of us. Why should he? Brian Adair he had marked as a coward. He must have known that Regina had left me afoot miles behind.

  Still I frowned as we paused briefly behind the windowless back wall of one of the pole and sod long-houses. Where were their horses? Where were the women? Had I made too many assumptions? We would just have to find out.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, I motioned to Brian to remain behind me a few paces as we rounded the corner of the building and I approached the front door. I saw one sign that all was not as I assumed, but that I was on the right trail. Simple as it seems, I spotted the horse-droppings near the hitch-rail and knew them to be fresh. It bolstered my flagging confidence at least a little. Someone was within, or had recently been.

  Then I was stumped. Did I try to knock on the door and risk being shot through it, try to shoulder my way inside, or use guile which is far from my strong suit? I reasoned that they would be expecting no one who was not part of the gang to find them and decided that bluffing was my best option.

  I stepped onto the porch and banged on the door with t
he stock of the Sharps rifle.

  ‘Hey!’ I bellowed. ‘What’s going on here! No one awake? Let me in, damnit!’

  If it weren’t for instinct I wouldn’t be here to tell you about what happened next, because as soon as I had demanded that the door be opened it was – in a hurry. I saw a grinning, bearded face and glimpsed the menacing twin muzzles of a shotgun lifting toward my head. I also, distantly it seemed, heard a scream.

  I flung an arm up, deflecting the outlaw’s weapon and rolled into his thighs, taking him down to the plank floor where we tangled ourselves in a confused pile. From the tail of my eye I saw a second man, also bearded, leap for his holstered revolver which was hanging on a wall peg.

  I was a dead man. There was no way I could wrestle with the man with the shotgun and defend myself against the second gunman at the same time.

  I cried out a bitter curse and struggled to free myself, but I found myself in the sights of the second man’s blue-steel Colt revolver. I could see his eye squinting at me, the slight amused twist to his lips. Then from behind me I heard the thunder of another pistol, saw the gunman stagger back, fire into the floor and slide down the wall to sit there lifelessly.

  The distraction gave me a fragment of a second to club the man with the shotgun with my right hand, drive my fist a second time into the hinge of his jaw and rip the weapon from his hands before he could do any damage with it.

  I rose panting, saw Brian Adair framed in the doorway, his Colt still curling smoke from its muzzle and I half-collapsed onto a nearby leather-strap chair, my Sharps rifle trained on the outlaw on the floor.

  Regina shrieked with relief, ran to her brother and threw herself against him. Brian was trembling, which was understandable. I had a twitch or two in my own limbs as I stood and walked to the man who had wielded the shotgun, kicked the weapon away and yanked him to his feet.